Wednesday, October 22, 2008

On The Floor

I know, I know. I fell off the blogging bandwagon again. There just aren't enough hours in the day. Thank goodness NaBloPoMo is coming up - hopefully it will whip me back into shape.

Anywho, I have been posting, just sort of out of order. You may have missed a late posting here, here or here. The last one is part of the reason I have been m.i.a. - our whole house is a bit displaced at the moment. We are tripping over everything and everyone right now and it is making my whole life a bit of a mess. but in a good way...

So this is some of the progress. I didn't say it in my post, but the flooring was about 60% off. Normally $1.14 or so a square foot, we got it all for $.49 a square foot. It was a deal too good to pass up, so we had to dip into some of our rainy day/ house emergency funds. We have been wanting to redo the floors for quite some time - I can't believe we actually did it!

So here is the living room minus furniture and carpet. It was pretty easy to pull everything up, but we had an issue with the entry tile. The room itself has so many angles and "features" that we wanted to simplify it all a bit and take out that corner spot of tile. The dotted tiles in the picture were demolished. I had to take the kids out for an hour or two so Hubby could smash, grind and suck up the mess; making lots of noise and dust. When we returned, everything in the house was covered in a lovely fine layer of grout dust. Oh well.

First we had to lay a layer of plastic over the concrete (oh and just for clarification, when I say "we" I really mean "Hubby". I didn't do much other than try to keep the kids out of the way.) and then a layer of padding over that.
I believe this is what Hubby accomplished over the weekend. Then he realized an error and had to pull it all up and redo it. Twice. Poor Hubby. [I made him a chocolate cake today. He earned it.]
Monday night he got a little further, and so we were able to move the couch back in and free up some of the dining room.
We pulled out a bit of the carpet in the dining room. This is the worst of the high traffic areas. See the dog peeking in the door? She was not happy to be outside all day.
I apologize for the next picture, but I just have to show you what may be lurking under your carpet pad if you have pets and/or kids. This is from about 5 years of heavy use and what was UNDER the PAD - not the carpet. I'm sorry you have to see this. Really, I am sorry.
EWWW EWWWW ACK!!!! It's ok to look away. I don't blame you. Another angle.

Needless to say we have stirred up so much dust and nastiness that all of us have been miserable with allergies for the past 5 days. I simply cannot believe how much yuck the carpet held; especially under the pad where a vacuum can't reach.

Hubby is about 2/3rds done with the living and dining rooms. Next is the hallway and finally the kitchen. We have flooring for the kitchen, but we are not sure we are going to be able to use it because the concrete in there is terribly uneven. We may have to go with some sort of tile or something. But it will be replaced. It will.

It better. I don't think I can stand it any longer.

Until,
D :)

3 comments:

Julia said...

That looks awesome! I think that's terrific that your hubby is so handy. We're saving up for floors right now, and there is no way that Howie (nor I) would ever pull it off ourselves.

Victoria said...

Ooo - I love the new floor!

jhjohnstone said...

That's great that you're finally getting new floors! Yes, carpets are nasty. The only downside to wood flooring though is you can't HIDE the dirt; it's right there in all it's glory for everyone to easily see. I sometimes take the spotlight and put it down at floor level. I'm disgusted by all the dust and dirt! At least with carpets, I could somewhat ignore it, but not with wood floors. LOL

Jackie